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Roy's Avs ready to rekindle rivalry with Red Wings?

Colorado takes on coach's nemesis: Detroit

By Adrian Dater The Denver Post

Posted:
10/16/2013 10:44:23 PM MDT

Updated:
10/16/2013 10:45:46 PM MDT

If anyone knew what a good rivalry was by the time he came to Denver in 1995, it was Patrick Roy. As a goalie with the Montreal Canadiens, he already had been a part of three of the best rivalries in hockey history: Montreal vs. Boston, Montreal vs. Toronto, Montreal vs. Quebec -- heated, passionate, storied rivalries, all.

But none of them came close to the rivalry that would become Avalanche vs. Red Wings.

"It was best of my career, no doubt about it," said Roy, whose Avs can improve to 7-0 with a victory tonight in Detroit's one and only regular-season visit to the Pepsi Center. "We were into it. There are a lot of good memories. Every time we played them, we knew that the winner had a good chance to go far in the playoffs, if not win the Stanley Cup."

The past few years have mostly been rivalry-free for the Avs as age, attrition and a rotten record turned them into patsies against most opponents. Colorado and Detroit last met in the playoffs in 2008, and that series finished ignominiously for the Avs, a sweep in the second round.

Denver is a great sports town but for whatever reason, none of the pro teams currently have great rivalries. Broncos-Oakland Raiders? It's been awhile since both teams were good in the same year. Rockies and Diamondbacks? Maybe in 2007, when they met in the National League championship series. Nuggets and ... anybody? Not really.

What makes a good, lasting rivalry?

Geography helps, and Denver's isolation hurts compared with other cities.

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The Canadiens and old Quebec Nordiques were about a 240-kilometer drive apart on the Trans-Canada Highway. History helps rivalries, too, but the first major Denver pro sports team, the Broncos of the old American Football League, were born in 1960. The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, by comparison, have been going at it since the early 1900s.

Mostly, though, repeated playoff matchups are what makes a great rivalry, and that is something Denver teams have lacked since the Wings and Avs duked it out on an almost annual basis.

"Let's make the playoffs a couple years in a row and I'm sure we can find someone," Roy said. "The playoffs are where the rivalries build up, and we faced Detroit a lot in the playoffs back then. Until we establish ourselves as one of the top teams, we need to be patient and then the rivalries will come back."

The Wings and Avs met five times in the postseason from 1996-2002, with the Avs winning three (1996, 1999 and 2000) and losing twice (1997 and 2002). Some of the most intense hockey in Avs history was played between two teams full of future Hall of Famers. The regular-season battles weren't bad either.

"The first thing you always looked for when the schedules came out was when the Detroit games were," Avalanche executive vice president of hockey operations Joe Sakic said. "There were other good teams, like Dallas, and we played them in the playoffs a few times, but I think we always measured ourselves against Detroit, and I'm sure they thought the same thing with us."

Many of the best verbal exchanges between the teams are unprintable in a newspaper. There were countless psychological games between the teams, too, including the time former Wings coach Scotty Bowman ordered the visiting locker room at Joe Louis Arena painted right before the 1996 Western Conference finals. Avs players had to breathe noxious fumes. That didn't stop them from sweeping the first two games of the series in Detroit. Then there was the time Bowman ordered a makeshift additional bench for the team's visits to McNichols Sports Arena, because he thought the visiting bench wasn't regulation length -- and it wasn't.

The fights between Roy and Detroit goalies Mike Vernon and Chris Osgood at center ice at The Joe are two of the best-remembered moments of the rivalry. When Roy is handed pictures to sign by fans, often they are of one of the two fights.

"We all did what we thought we had to do in those games, to be on the winning side," Roy said. "But I think we're living a lot in the past right now, and I try to move on, to be honest, and look at what's next for us."

With the Avs in a new division, a new rival most likely will come from one of the teams inside that division, especially since the first two rounds of the playoffs will feature series between the top-four finishing teams in the division (No. 1 seed plays No. 4 and No. 2 vs. No. 3, then the winners of those series play for the division championship, followed by the conference finals).

"I think that's what the league wanted when they did it that way -- for more rivalries to happen that last awhile," Avs goalie J.S. Giguere said.

It will be a tough chore for any of the rivalries to match Avs-Wings, circa 1996-2002.

"I watched most of those games on TV," said Matt Duchene, 22. "It was just great hockey -- the best. It might not be like it once was, but we've played them pretty tough the last few years. I think they always bring out the best in us. They're still a great team, and it's going to be a good game (Thursday) night I'm sure, fun for the fans."

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